Pictures of us

Click to play this Smilebox slideshow
Create your own slideshow - Powered by Smilebox
Another picture slideshow by Smilebox

Monday, March 11, 2013

Our health

Thankfully we have three foster siblings right now as Abbey and I have had a few rough weeks. This week we are back to ourselves and ready to be back in the office. We are thankful that Kadia, Everheart, and Lo-rida (our foster siblings from  Brooke's Legacy) were able to get some practice with socializing and stand in with a few clients. They are still available for adoption and have been learning a lot from Abbey and I.

Thank you for everyone who has sent emails, texts, and called to check on us. Tara lets us know all the messages!

For those that don't know, Abbey often gets ear infections so when she was itching her ears, Tara assumed it was that until Abbey screamed out in pain. In a very short time (6 days) Abbey had a growth inside of her left ear. They had to put her on 10 days of steroids to get the swelling down because you can't stitch the inside of the ear. Tuesday of last week she had her surgery. Anyone that has followed us long enough knows that Abbey does not do well with anesthesia so Tara avoids it as much as possible. This was not an avoidable situation as it kept growing and they needed to get it out.

We have an amazing vet who worked closely with Tara to make sure the plan was agreeable and the meds would be altered in hopes of getting her through the surgery with success and not too much pain. Well to make a long story short, it worked. Abbey came home that night and just wanted to be by herself. We all know what time the pain medicine wore off as Abbey got really sick and kept crying. Myself and the other dogs just kept watching her as Tara laid with her and tried to get her comfortable. I do not like seeing my sister hurting. It made me very nervous and I kept pacing around the house.

By morning Abbey was doing better. The vet called to check in and talked to Tara about keeping Abbey's ear dry and trying not to clean it. She said they had to go deeper than planned as the growth was in the ear canal and was probably causing Abbey to not hear well. Abbey's ear began to grow more infection (not the growth) later in the week and the vet walked through Tara how to clean it and what to do to try to prevent having to go back to the doctor.

The final update is that she is feeling much better now and has one more week of medicine and then we will also have the biopsy back to know what exactly it was and how it got so big so fast.Thankfully we think this is all behind.

Now for me. As you know, I have an autoimmune disorder that caused me a lot of distress last year. Recently I had my EKG's during some procedures and they found some struggles with my heart so my first appointment with the cardiologist was also last week.

It was a long drive there and Tara says we don't have to go back. I am thankful for that as I did not like it there. Tara told them what a great dog I am and then they put this thing on my mouth so I couldn't move it. I panicked. I was scared. I cried. Tara was mad. They didn't tell her and then when she saw it as they brought  me back in, they told her it was for my safety. I was so upset that water was coming out of my mouth and I couldn't stop panting. My belly  began to hurt really bad and I kept trying to open the door to leave. The room was small and kept feeling smaller and smaller. The good news is that while there is an "electrical issue" with my heart, it is fine structurally and nothing to worry about. The cardiologist thinks it has to do with my autoimmune disorder. I am just glad my regular vet can monitor me and we don't have to go back.

It is not fun to have someone force you to do something you don't want to do and not have any control. It was very scary to have my mouth muzzled. It took me several days to feel better so I took the whole week off last week.

I hope this post makes sense as I wanted to hurry and get it done since we haven't been on here in so long with all this going on. We are going to try really hard to do better!

~Bode